The squad Social Interactions with Shared Systems focuses on the social information that is visible, that people become aware of and that people will hold others accountable for. The three building blocks of social information are therefore visibility, awareness and accountability, which are used by people at all times to evaluate a social environment and coordinate their actions and behavior to that evaluation. It is important to acknowledge that people are already very good at executing this skill: it can be seen as a part of human nature and instinct.
The project that was performed within this squad focusses on a scenario in which a group of acquainted people comes together to watch a movie and to generally have a good time. It was decided to focus on the active decision making process that precedes the actual watching of a movie, aiming to design a shared system that is able to make this active decision making process more efficient and more enjoyable, instead of tiresome and prone to long-lasting discussion.
Furthermore, it was aimed to neutralize the shared information bias within the group by making sure that every user’s preference is being taken into account, resulting in an increase of user satisfaction. A concept was designed in the form of a tangible marble track combined with a mobile application and a tv-screen application in order to encounter the design conditions: Marble. User testing the designed concept resulted in interesting findings from which most striking was observing the participants evolving from expressing small, unpretentious interactions to vast and exuberant interactions whilst using the designed concept. Finally - being well aware that the designed concept represents a metaphor - an attempt has been made towards translating the metaphor into a more concrete product that can be visualized within the concept.
AFFILIATION
Master Industrial Design (TU/e)
ACTIVITY
Premaster Design Project
SQUAD
Social Interactions with Shared Systems
PROJECT COACH
dr.ir. H.A. van Essen
PERIOD
S1 Q1&2 (2018/2019)
TEAM
Sander Pouw, Alex de Kruijff,
Nick Voskuil
Keywords
User & Society, Creativity & Aesthetics, Technology & Realization, Paper Prototyping, 3D printing, User Testing, Product Design, Digital Design, Social Translucence, Shared Information Bias, Active Decision Making Process
GRADE
Promotion (P)
Whilst creating this portfolio and filling the separate pages with content, I attempted to recover my reflection for this Premaster design project. This attempt failed due to this reflection being non-existent, which immediately confirms how I remember to have felt at that time: confused, lost and struggling to adjust myself properly to a new, different educational system. I did write a reflection, as writing a reflection and attaching it to the design report as an addendum is a mandatory deliverable, but I completely devoted this reflection towards my competence development and growth as a designer gained through the courses that I had attended that semester. My developments concerning the design project itself were completely disregarded, as the reflection does not include a (re)formed vision and identity and does not reflect on the learning goals that were set at the beginning of the semester in my PDP.
Luckily, after succeeding the Premaster's program, I quickly gained grip on what was expected of me and how I should adjust my mindset and activities to deliver results that fit within the learning system of Industrial Design.
For this portion, I will attempt to briefly reflect on the Premaster design project in hindsight. It can be regarded rather ironic that we were designing a product that was maybe unconsciously inspired by our own failing collaboration, as endless group discussions resulted in struggling to make decisions and having a clear direction for the largest part of the semester. At the end of the semester, we collaboratively came to the conclusion that all those discussions were rather useless and a waste of time, as any of the options for the direction of the project would have been fruitful.
Concerning the AEs, I cannot say that I performed design activities that were of substantial value to my competence development and growth as a designer: this project was - for me - a way of showcasing the department of Industrial Design what I can do, to 'prove' that I could be an interesting asset to their faculty. I did however substantially develop myself in DRP, as I became acquainted with the scientific methods of doing design research, by implementing such methods in my processes. I have executed a user test that meets the requirements of the scientific methods (e.g. by collecting informed consent forms) and I have delivered my very first Design Report that meets the scientific standards, by applying the APA-guidelines for referencing sources and by delivering the report in the CHI publication format.
